Provenance
by Rainstorm Amaya Arianrhod
Summary: Eowyn is just another girl enlisting to forget, and it ought to be as simple as that. Polly has a horrible feeling that it isn't.


**A/N: **Much like _Time Is, Time Was_, his is totally all Gogol's fault. Girl makes me write bizarre Lord of the Rings/Discworld crossovers all. the. time. _**Please read and review! **_

... Also, if the idea of girls kissing bothers you, you should probably steer clear.

**Disclaimer: **I do not own Lord of the Rings or Discworld, nor am I associated with the Tolkien Estate or Sir Terry Pratchett, and do not seek legal ownership/any profit. I'm just playing in somebody else's sandbox, and I promise to put them back when I'm done!

* * *

Eowyn is just another girl signing up to forget something, Polly knows that, and she knows, too, that there is something odd about her. If it's not in the strange name, in the cool, light voice, the walk like tempered steel and the delicate, sharp features, it's in the curiously blank blue eyes. The last time Polly saw eyes like that, they were in Lofty's head.

Luckily, Wyn – the first syllable goes within minutes of the girl's enlisting, and she seems to welcome the loss – is not in love with fire, or they might have (another) problem, given the lack of a Tonker to keep her in check. Instead, she's in love with horses, murmuring to them softly in that rich, rolling, totally incomprehensible mother-tongue of hers, managing the trickiest beasts with a sharp eye and strong, calloused hands. It's the only time, Polly thinks, that she looks really alive, and it's definitely not because she wants Wyn to look more alive that she has her manage every single horse-related task that comes their way.

Because that's the thing that frightens people about Wyn. The blank quality of her eyes is only matched by her own strange stillness, waiting for the next thing to happen to her; she was as still when she took her place in a square, waiting for the enemy attack, as when Mal cut that mass of pale gold hair and trimmed around the ears with a tiny, lethal knife. Wyn is immovable, unshakable, and hardly ever smiles, let alone laughs; she's also addicted to duty. It's almost frightening.

And it's not that Polly isn't grateful for this addiction right now, since Wyn is supposedly saving her life because of it, but it does rather suggest that something is going on that Polly is failing to understand, and the sergeant in Polly wants to rant and rave and bellow until someone explains. It may well be true that Wyn is just doing her duty and Mal ordered Wyn to find Polly, bleeding to death on the edge of a battlefield, but it's significantly more likely that this is an order that Wyn has interpreted- and that's not even what's really _bothering_ Polly, it's that Wyn has found her on the battlefield, carried her away from it, set up a nice, comfortable camp, attended to Polly's wounds with a very neat little field medical kit, and fed her, and is now proposing to sit up for the rest of the night and watch Polly sleep. Furthermore, she has done all this with a beautiful horse that Polly rather thinks has been stolen and a longsword which isn't exactly lovely but is certainly very functional, definitely not standard issue, probably also stolen.

"Why?" Polly demands, her voice harsh in her own throat.

Wyn barely even looks up from mending Polly's ripped jacket with neat, even stitches rather like those holding half of the muscles on Polly's left leg together. "Why did I come for you, sir? It's my duty to look after my commanding officer."

"Duty," Polly croaks, "duty isn't everything," making Wyn fumble the knot at the end of one mended tear and curse in her own tongue. Polly can count on the fingers of one hand the times Wyn has messed up anything. This is a special occasion.

Wyn finally says, even as ever: "Doing my duty is the only honour left to me, sir."

Polly, feeling the ice shudder and creak under her feet, backs off, staring into the bright flames of the little fire- smokeless, good dry wood. Wyn used it to make thin rabbit stew, just too strong to be scubbo, for Polly. Polly couldn't keep most of it down, although whether because Wyn is a perfectly moulded army cook and makes very nutritious food that only starving men would eat or because Polly's badly wounded, Polly doesn't know.

She feels herself blinking towards sleep, and yawns. Wyn smiles, a candle shining gamely through a thick sheet of ice, and comes over to Polly, laying both mending and sleek sword aside. She crouches by Polly, lays a hand on her forehead, cards her fingers through butter-yellow, dirty, greasy, sweat-stained curls, and kisses her softly on the mouth, light and warm, her lips dry and chapped.

"Sleep," she whispers, straightening up, and Polly turns her face blindly to icy silent competent strange Wyn, and sleeps.

Wyn is like her own sword. Not very lovely, but extremely functional – and nobody can, will or should tell you where they came from.


End file.
